I skated toward them, heart hammering, and for a moment . . . It hit me. This little circle of light. These women with Eleanor in the middle of them.
She wasn’t just someone I cared about.
She was someone I was falling for.
And watching her find her power like this?
Yeah. I was already halfway there.
After an hour of skating, wobbling, celebrating tiny victories, and laughing until Eleanor nearly fell over again, Mel clapped her hands sharply.
“Hydrate or die-drate, bitches!” she announced. “Come on, food break.”
She skated off like she had rockets in her skates and returned a moment later pushing a rolling cart loaded with pretzels, fruit, some protein bars, a plate of nachos, and three Gatorades.
“Feast, peasants,” Mel declared.
Belle snorted and grabbed a nacho. “You are so dramatic.”
“That’s some pot and kettle nonsense coming from you,” Mel replied.
We all settled near the benches. Eleanor plopped down beside me, cheeks flushed pink, braids frizzy in the cutest possible way. I passed her a bottle of water.
“Thank you,” she murmured, brushing her fingers over mine as she took it.
The touch was small. Innocent. And it still sent a warm pulse through me.
We dug into the snacks, and Eleanor turned to Mel with a curious tilt of her head.
“So . . . does Becca still skate?” she asked.
Mel snorted, very unladylike. “Oh, she skates. But the violence of derby wasn’t really her thing.”
Belle waggled her eyebrows. “Becca prefers her chaos without body checks.”
Eleanor grinned. “That makes sense.”
Then Belle leaned forward, eyes narrowing playfully. “How’s it been having your mom back?”
Eleanor groaned so loudly that the entire rink echoed with it.
“So bad,” she said dramatically, falling back against the bench. “She’s already commented on how ‘roller skating is unbecoming,’ she left me a brochure for a cooking class she thinks I ‘should really consider,’ and she told Ava that her hair looked messy this morning.”
A collective hiss rose from the three of us.
“Oh no, she didn’t,” Mel said.
“She DID,” Eleanor said, exasperated. “I swear, she treats me like I’m seventeen again. I can’t breathe.”
Belle nudged her knee. “You need your own space, girl.”
“Yeah,” Eleanor sighed. “I really do.”
I swallowed. Hard. Because immediately my mind conjured an image of Eleanor not in her mother’s house but . . . next door.
Literally next door, in the empty half of my duplex. Her own space. Her own rules. A place where she and Ava could breathe and laugh and be loud or quiet or whatever they needed.
A place where I could see her every day.
